The trillionaire laughed. “After we left that planet, the imperial forces landed and occupied not just the goat planets but the entire solar system. They seemed to be confused about why they were ordered to possess that system because they stayed for only a short while before they departed for other operations.”
“You mean they left that system unguarded? After taking the trouble to send a force to conquer it?”
“Even the Empire has limited resources. I was curious why they failed to take the usual measures, particularly since the value of the correct goat planet is beyond calculation. Do you happen to know the answer to that question?”
Farstar’s finger edged toward the firing switch, but he felt 3Maggie’s hand close gently over his right hand.
“Father, I can give you that information. I have done a deep penetration of Manny Farstar’s mind. When he took possession of the correct goat island, he blocked communication by the imperial guard to their home base. He also confiscated all records pertaining to the planet. Aside from the information I mined from the library on Phobos—when I was a human and a librarian—there was no other record of the assay results for that planet. In fact, it was anomalous among the one hundred one then-known resource orbs. I had deduced that the imperial court—or perhaps the Emperor or Empress—had purposely kept records of that repository of wealth a secret from everyone else in the universe.”
Farstar was now looking at his 3Maggie with his brow furrowed. “3Maggie, are you a robot, or are you a human now?”
The AI smiled sadly. “Eons ago, it seems, a brilliant man made that the test for artificial intelligences, didn’t he? I’m afraid I must answer in the only way suitable: Manny Farstar, are you a human, or a robot?”
The Edgemaster blinked. He genuinely searched his soul for the answer to that question. “Since a being I thought was an AI has asked me the definitive question about my own core being, I must assume there is doubt in her computations about my being a human.”
Frictenicht interrupted them. “I don’t really care whether one or both of you are AIs or humans. And I have too much on my mind to wait until you sort out your respective situations for yourselves. We are alone now, but we won’t be without company for long. As Manny Farstar knows, he and his brothers have been marked down for termination by the Emperor for being a leading figure of the resistance. The reward for capturing or killing the infamous Manny Farstar is substantial. Say, if I were to kill Farstar now, I’d probably triple my fortune. You who were my daughter once, please tell me what I should do!”
“My former father, I’m enjoying Farstar’s company far too much to be deprived of it right now. You stole my life as a human while I was in my prime. It hardly seems fair that I should terminate yours while you are on the brink of expanding your fortune.”
“Did you say, ‘terminate,’ former daughter?”
By way of answer, 3Maggie released Manny’s hand and reached over it to press the firing key. The intended result was the destruction of the vessel from which Frictenicht’s signals had been emanating. Fragments of the spacecraft and its occupant were atomized. The robot shrugged and patted Farstar on the hand.
“Manny Farstar, it seems we have come a long way for nothing.”
The Edgemaster said, “Not nothing, 3Maggie. We have learned critical knowledge about the goat planets, and I have learned much about you.”
“You’ll have to enlighten me about both, Manny. But I’ll first have to get your instructions about departing a place where the imperial forces are soon to arrive.”
“You’re right, 3Maggie. I’ll input the coordinates. Once they have been entered, you set our course to that objective with five waypoints. Use various speeds between waypoints and keep a close watch on this location for intelligence about the arrival of the imperial forces.”
The AI effortlessly did as she was ordered. “We are on the first leg of our journey. Autopilot will execute all turns until we reach our objective. Now will you explain?”
Farstar sat back in his captain’s chair and made a steeple out of his fingers. “Your former father informed us that the Empire really knows nothing about the riches of goat planet even though someone at the imperial court may know everything about them. About you, I learned that you have your former father’s instincts but your own will to survive.”
“What about my will to survive?”
“If you had not destroyed your former father’s space ship, he would have destroyed ours. By killing him, you interdicted his action.”
“Why would he have slain us?”
“He wanted to eliminate the only other two entities in the universe who knew about the goat planet—besides, of course, the unknown figure at the imperial court. Your former father also confessed that he had not yet unscrambled the mystery about which of the three planets contained the riches.”
“You humans are so linear in your thought processes. Still, I wonder about my own motives in killing my former father. I did so without a moment’s hesitation. I feel no remorse. Should I feel something? Or is it all right that I don’t?”
“I might be cynical and suggest that you are one cruel bitch, 3Maggie.” He saw her flinch somewhat. “I’ll only say that your father ordered your death without apparently having any remorse. And he was going to eliminate any vestige of you that remained by killing us both. Killing him was your way of surviving. I suppose one day you’ll kill me too.”
Now she looked hurt. “I can’t imagine any reason I would do that.”
“I can. You are a 3Maggie. Your predecessor was the 3Maggie I sent to her death.”
“True, but the purpose of her death was noble. You sent her to destroy pure evil. She went where no one else could have gone—and she did the impossible task you ordered. I am convinced she would be proud to have accomplished what she did, for you.”
“3Maggie, will you please parse for me how much you are my former 3Maggie and how much you are what remains of Hygeia Frictenicht?”
The robot did a few calculations. Manny knew this because she was rolling her eyes and looking bored. She was also drumming her polished nails on the command desk before her.
“Is it hard to calculate?” he asked.
“The problem is, the calculation is impossible. Each time, I get an infinite loop that I have to shut down or crash my system.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means, I’m as much a robot as a human. And, I’m afraid, I’m involved with a human as intimately as a hybrid could possibly be.”
3Maggie looked at her display and announced, “We have exactly four hours before we reach the location whose coordinates you gave me. The coast is clear, I believe the expression you humans have. So we have time to dally, if you like.” She stood and held out her hand. He rose and took her slender, warm hand, and led her out of the command center and down the corridor to the sleeping compartment. “The AI or hybrid or human—or whatever—was right about one thing: they had four hours to dally before she hit the ceiling and the alarm went off to indicate they were exactly where they intended to be.
Manny was sweating, and so, it seems was she. They showered and stepped through the power drier before they suited up again and went back to the command pod. There they witnessed the gathering of an imperial space brigade busily vacuuming space in concentric circles to be sure every speck of Frictenicht and his spacecraft were gathered.
“I guess, they’re going to reconstruct your father and his ship.”
“It figures. I’m sure he was intestate—and all his heirs are dead. That means his fortune will revert to the Empire.”
“Except for goat planet, which will remain outside his estate—and outside the compass of the Empire too. I wonder who in the universe holds the key to its mystery, apart from us two.”
“Do you want me to do a few computations with probabilities assigned to each possible entity?”
“There’s no need. If we ever want to claim our prize, we simply must go there and take possession.”
“I like that attitude,” she said. “But just the same, I’ll take a few spare cycles to run the possibilities. It happens that I remember everything I researched while on Phobos. I thought one day it might come in handy.”
Farstar looked at his associate with a mixture of wonder and pride. He thought to himself, “She may not be my former 3Maggie, but she’s getting better all the time. Having Hygeia in her psyche is a plus. I haven’t had four hours of pleasure like we shared since, well, since my old 3Maggie left me.”
*
That night when Manny slept and dreamt, 3Maggie did her numbers to assess who was most likely to know the truth about goat planet.
Manny found himself flying low over the tight, brown mass of sargassum that had swelled to fill the Atlantic Ocean basin. He flew higher until all he could see from north to south and east to west was sargassum and plastic bobbing up and down with the tide. He flew over the Indian Ocean to find more masses of plastic stretching from the Arabian Gulf now a giant slick of oil from the wars to the Strait of Malacca. Continuing over the Pacific, the congestion of plastic mapped the placid surface, threatening all forms of life from the surface to the deepest trenches. He mused that it would be better to live with those who had made those floating islands their abode than to try to make a living on the radiation-scorched landmasses.
Manny thought about the enormous rats that bred in the sewers of deserted cities. He visualized the glistening city buildings that had been blasted by nuclear weapons. The teeming masses of people who had been atomized or, worse, who fell prey to the biological and chemical weapons. Now no ice remained on Earth in the Himalayas or at the poles. Swirling cyclones swept over the planet, carrying lethal rains everywhere. In some places the radiation was burning brightly still. In others the carcasses of formerly living beasts heaped high as if the dying creatures had huddled one last time before they expired.
Manny wondered what malevolent deities had played on this vast planet where no forests remained unmolested and no waters were pure. Rotting fish sloshed in the tides. Rotting corpses, too numerous for burials, lay open to the carrion pickers, including humans. The Edgemaster thought about the marvelous machines, but they had all been destroyed by Luddites. Only those aboard the Spaceship Arcturus had survived. He flew to the top of the mountain from which that mighty ark had launched. Scorched earth marked the roads to the summit, and blasted war gear lay in tangled masses where the nuclear attack had hurled them helter skelter.
The thing that impressed him most was the blinding sunlight, no longer with an ozone layer sheltering the surface. The oppressive heat from above was matched by the bubbling of nuclear reactors in sunken vessels. Manny felt tears streaming down his face, and he could not raise his hand to brush them away. He recalled the last time he saw his four brothers, and he had a premonition that, as they had promised, they would never see one another again in this life. They surely, he thought, would not want to return to Earth.
The Edgemaster thought again about his goat planet. He found himself dangling his feet in the empty grave while Frictenicht sat beside him holding his lethal weapon threateningly.
“Well, Manny Farstar, here we are on the edge of that empty grave again. What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking this goat planet may be the closest place to paradise left in the universe.”
“If it contains the wealth I think it does, it might certainly be that paradise you speak of.”
“A lot of good it will do you, old man. You were once a multi-trillionaire. Now you have been atomized—by your former daughter.”
The old man made a noise that may have been a sob. “I loved that girl. She betrayed me. I should have closed my firing key before she closed hers.”
“And, in the long run, Frictenicht, what would that have bought you besides a few trillion more than you already had.”
“Farstar, you are always the idealist. You can’t convince me that you wouldn’t change if you possessed one of those precious orbs that make the universe turn?”
“Are you forgetting that I already have possessed such an orb—and we’re sitting with our feet in a grave on that goat planet as we speak.”
“But I regained possession, and you got what was left of my daughter in return.”
“And she, in turn, slew you. The last we saw, you were being swept from space so imperial forensics could determine you were really dead.”
“I? Really dead? Are you sure?”
“I saw it happen. You were blown to smithereens.”
“And you think my daughter could have done that cruel deed—to the one who brought her into the world and nurtured her—and gave her everything.”
“Everything except love and understanding.”
“You are too lowly and proud to know the true sources of power in the universe.”
“Perhaps. But I must compliment you on two things that are not necessarily connected.”
The old man smiled and gestured with his weapon for Farstar to continue.
“I’m beginning to love the 3Maggie you gave me despite her being in part derived from your daughter.”
“And?”
“I thank you sincerely for devising a way for me to hide my possession of one of your precious orbs of wealth without anyone’s knowledge.”
“On your second point, how can you be sure no one else knows about your goat planet?”
“Until I discover otherwise, I’ll assume I am sole owner and the only one—with 3Maggie—who knows the secret.”
“Well, have it your way. Unless and until, fate intrudes and shatters your illusion. I’m afraid I’ve wasted enough of your time on this visit. Do you have anything else to say before I pull the trigger on this weapon?”
“You might take the safety off before you do.”
The old man fell for the oldest trick in the arsenal—he checked the safety.
Farstar took his chance and jammed the base of his hand into the old man’s nose, crushing the cartilage and jamming the bone into the man’s frail skull. In the struggle, the old man managed to fire his weapon, and the pair fell into the grave, the old man landing on top of the Edgemaster, who gasped for air but only breathed in contagion. He struggled to push the old man’s body off, but he seemed too heavy by far.
Female laughter made him shake his head. Farstar found himself pinned under a naked 3Maggie, who was randy for his attention with her legs poised on either side of his body.
“A credit for your thoughts, Manny Farstar?”
He smiled and pulled her head down so he could kiss her on the lips. When he came up for air, he mumbled something.
“What are you trying to say, Manny?”
“I was thinking about how much fun it would be to go around the world with you. Not Earth as it is now with all its putrefaction, but as it once was, a blue and green paradise.”
“Will you teach me what it is like to go around the world?”
“Indeed, that’s exactly what I’ll do.”
And Manny Farstar taught his eager student what it meant, and she caught on right away. She even added a few twists of her own devising. Manny kept working to make her respond with joy—and she flung her head back in rapture with noises that had to be human.
“What were you saying, 3Maggie?”
“I was saying that you promised to continue telling me about your four brothers.”
“Was I?”
“You know you were.”
“First things first, though.”
“What is first?”
“Another trip around the world. What else?”
She smiled wickedly. Then she turned off him and lay on her back with her arms open wide.
“I like being on top, but let’s try something different. You be on top, and I’ll lie beneath you. What do you say to that?”
The Edgemaster thought for a moment about sitting on the edge of that grave on goat planet. He thought he heard the distant bleat of goats. Pushing himself up and roll
ing on top of his robot, he felt her legs wrap around him. He looked down into her deep blue eyes and saw the same reflection as appeared in his former robot’s eyes. Tears welled up in her eyes, but she pulled his head down to kiss her.
“That’s better, Manny Farstar. I hope I’m learning fast enough to satisfy you.”
“Yes, 3Maggie, you are exceeding all my expectations. If you were any better, my heart would surely break from happiness.”
“Do human hearts really break from happiness?”
“I’m told they do, and I thought mine would break when I lost your predecessor.”
She needed no further incitement. He felt her struggle to surpass her best former efforts. They literally went to the stars and finally lay with the overhead ceiling open to a trillion stars twinkling in their personal heaven. Manny was about to tell her more about his brothers, but she placed her index finger on his lips and raised her head to kiss him.
“Tonight, I want to remember.”
He replied, “Tonight, I want to forget everything but tonight.”
Space Caravanserai
“Manny,” 3Maggie said in alarm, “Our sensors have detected a huge collection of vessels moving outbound from the center of the universe.”
Manny reviewed her display and the underlying data for a few minutes.
“Steer to avoid that mass by approaching no closer than one parsec. That will keep us from being detected by their sensors.”
“How can we be sure of that?” she asked. “According to My data, there’s no surveillance limit to a mass of spacecraft as large as the one our sensors have detected.”
“Relax, AI. You’ll recall that my brother designed the imperial logistical support lines of communication. He specifically introduced the ‘one parsec rule’ that was adopted for official imperial traffic.”
“Just the same, with your permission, I’ll plot to avoid by 1.5 parsecs.”
“Have it your way, 3Maggie. And, while you’re about it, keep our passive sensors slewed to their max reception limits. If black scouts are protecting the convoy, we can count on their carrying classified contraband.”
Weird Tales About the End Page 6